


The Olde Google

by YourSpinsterAunt



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Demons, Ghosts, Ouija, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 05:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18230666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourSpinsterAunt/pseuds/YourSpinsterAunt
Summary: A young medium moves to the big city but she has trouble making friends in the area... until she meets Beelzebub. (I got nothin', guys, I just thought the idea was a funny one.)





	The Olde Google

Hestia Potts was an excellent medium, but spectacularly clumsy about ordinary things like cooking and maps and the internet. This had never been a problem in the country, where she knew everyone, and there was Phil who came around for a chat with his mom on Tuesday afternoons and would tinker with things. But now she was alone in the big city and she’d just been to a large department store.

Her new apartment was very modern and very small, but not so modern that she had wifi at the ready or so small that it didn’t need the large hanging flower lamp with “some assembly required”. She used her new key to enter the building and opened a bottle of cheap champagne—alas! drunk in solitude—and after that things seemed to get a little out of hand. The lamp did not look like a lamp. She took out her scratched and well-beloved flip-phone but there was no service. She looked into the hallway but there was nobody loitering about helpfully. In a stroke of genius she pulled out her ouija board. 

“Good old… thing,” she said, patting it affectionately. 

The first spirit she reached tried to tell her knock-knock jokes. They were all hilarious, and it cheered her up immensely. She would tackle the lower flamp tomorrow.

But with her champagne hangover came wisdom. 

“Is there a spirit nearby who speaks Swedish? I need help with a translation.” It took several tries to find the right spirit but the lamp was coming along nicely when bits of it began to levitate and fly angrily across the room. She turned back to the board.

“THIS IS BEELZEBUB, SECOND DUKE OF HELL. NILS HAS TO GO BACK TO WORK.”

“Oh, sorry! Bye Nils! I think I’ve got a handle on it now.”

The lamp really was nice but it wasn’t very bright, and the internet never did work properly but that didn’t seem to matter. Her loneliness abated. Besides, it wasn’t really like taking her job home; she mostly did trances and channeling at work.

“Errr, hello. It’s Hestia again. I want to talk to someone who knows about pasta. Anyone? I’ve just moved.”

She listed off the contents of her cupboard. Several older women popped in with competing recipes. They were a bit jumbled but she did manage to cobble together an edible meal. Someone with the mouth of a sailor came in at the end and told everyone to stop holding the line open and could they please have some consideration for others, at which point the party broke off with amicable farewells. Stlll, it was nice to have friends.

Swimming around in the bowels of the upper deeps of hell, Beelzebub (Jr.) complained stridently to his coworkers about the switchboard operators and long-distance connections, and young people these days. Next time she would probably want help finding a good place to get avocados for her toast, or how to refinance student loans. Honestly, he couldn’t bear it any more. 

They tried to hide it from Beelzebub when the locksmith’s auntie Jill (dead thirty years and glad of it) came to him in the van’s rear-facing mirror and spoke the address of a nice young lady who needed a hand and whose “tellimphonius” had gone “oot the charge”, but the demon found out days later by overhearing Jeremy from the next cubicle over doing an imitation of his voice telling them all off. It was time he took things into his own claws. 

He disconnected the lines from her portal and waited two weeks, got special permission to appear in her hallway mirror and everything. Bit dramatic, but should do the trick. He put on a false nose for the occasion.

“HESTIA.” All the kitchen implements rattled in their various drawers and jars. “IT IS I. BEELZEBUB, SECO—“ 

Already there was sobbing coming from the tiny apartment. Oh, for the ever-loving hate of PICKLES. 

“PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, HESTIA.”

She gulped and hiccuped. She hadn’t meant to cause any trouble. She just missed having friends. HAD SHE TRIED THE INTERNET? It wouldn’t connect to her modem. HAD SHE TRIED TURNING IT OFF AND THEN TURNING IT BACK ON AGAIN? No. WHY DON’T WE TRY THAT NOW. Her voice was shaky but she flipped the switch on the plastic box. He waited five minutes without listening to her conversation, which was becoming steadily more cheerful. He was getting a migraine, he was sure. WHAT COLOR WERE THE LIGHTS NOW. Green and blinky. And it worked. ALRIGHT. WELL, HAVE A GOOD NIGHT. 

He blinked as she thanked him, and hung up as if the connection burned him. No one must know. Especially Jeremy.


End file.
